Panel Backs Residential Hotel Proposals

A San Diego City Council committee on Wednesday approved recommendations by the city’s Housing Commission to encourage the construction of single-room residential hotels, a major source of temporary, low-income housing.

However, the Public Services and Safety Committee rejected two recommendations that were called bad for property owners and for downtown. The proposals would require property owners who demolish such hotels to build an equivalent number of single-room occupancy units elsewhere, and to pay moving expenses for residents displaced by the hotels’ demolition.

Several downtown single-room residential hotels--which offer modest accommodations for monthly and weekly rates--have been razed in recent years to make room for redevelopment projects. Groups such as the Regional Task Force on the Homeless have said the loss of such affordable housing has forced some people to live on the street.

Last December, the City Council passed an ordinance seeking to freeze the number of residential hotels, while the Housing Commission determined ways to preserve them. The committee on Wednesday approved 25 of the Housing Commission’s 27 recommendations to preserve the city’s 63 residential hotels, including the relaxation of building codes to make the construction of such units more economically attractive.

However, representatives of the Downtown Owners and Residents Assn., Centre City Development Corp. and the Gaslamp Quarter Assn. said the commission’s other two proposals would penalize property owners and lead to blight.

Larry Monserrat of the Gaslamp Quarter Assn. said the two provisions would be “a threat to the lifeblood” of the downtown redevelopment area.

“It would be a contradiction of the intent of the City Council to redevelop Gaslamp,” Monserrat said. “We support the City Council’s efforts to try and deal with the problem (of homelessness), but downtown and Gaslamp are the wrong place to start.”